What does a parachute do?

In ancient China, there was a man named Shun, who was one of the famous emperors. Once, his son came to kill him, forced him to the top of a tall granary, lit a fire from below, and jumped down from above with two big hats.

Shun fell to his death, didn't he? No. Those two big hats saved his life. It turns out that the concave surface of the hat is downward. When people move downward in the air, the concave surface intercepts the airflow and produces greater resistance, which is the embryonic form of parachute.

The emergence of parachutes abroad is many years later than that of China. 1495, Leonardo da Vinci, a famous Italian artist and scientist, designed a pyramid parachute, but he didn't practice it. 1595, an Italian named Vellazio put canvas on a wooden frame and successfully jumped off the top of the tower. 1628, there was a prisoner named Lavin in an Italian prison. He wanted to find an opportunity to escape, but the prison at that time was a very high fortress. So he secretly found an umbrella, tied every spoke of the umbrella with many small strings, held the other end of the string in his hand and jumped with the open umbrella. Lavin's success in skydiving aroused great interest of pilots. 1783, the Frenchman Lenoy made a parachute that looked like an umbrella and jumped safely from the top of the tower. 1785, Frenchman blanchard carried out high-altitude experiments with heavy objects: he successfully descended from a balloon with an umbrella.

Ghana forest in France has made outstanding contributions to parachutes. 1797, he made a parachute out of thin canvas, hung it under a hot air balloon, rose to the sky, and then cut off the connection with the balloon. He jumped off a 9000-meter-high balloon and successfully completed his first skydiving. The parachute he designed can be said to be the prototype of a modern round umbrella.

19 At the end of the 20th century, an umbrella made entirely of cloth appeared. 190 1 year, American skydiver Broadwick designed an umbrella bag, which greatly reduced the size of the packed parachute. Soon, he invented the suspenders, so that paratroopers could carry their parachutes.

1 91March1day, American pilot Bailey successfully parachuted. 19 18 a plane driven by a german pilot suddenly broke down and he parachuted to escape. Since then, the life-saving function of parachutes has received widespread attention.

People fall from the sky, the speed can reach more than tens of meters per second, and they will definitely break when they hit the ground. If you open the life-saving parachute, the situation will be very different: a parachute with a windward area of 20 ~ 30 square meters can reduce the falling speed of people to about 5 meters per second, which is similar to jumping from 1 meter. Of course there is no danger.

After the invention of the airplane, parachutes saved the lives of many pilots. As time goes on, the use of parachutes goes far beyond the scope of life saving. In World War II, the former Soviet Union parachuted paratroopers and combat materials for the first time, with outstanding achievements. The weather station recovered the detection instrument by parachute. The planetary probe landed slowly on the surface of the planet with the help of a parachute. When astronauts return from outer space, they sometimes open their parachutes and land safely. Parachutes are also widely used in sports skydiving.

Parachutes have developed rapidly in recent decades. Square umbrellas, round umbrellas, guide umbrellas, umbrellas ... appeared one after another. Materials have also developed from cotton and silk to nylon. In the early 1970s, the whole parachute appeared again. It can not only descend, but also glide, which is a major breakthrough in the development of parachute.